


The Haunted City

by seekingferret



Category: Hebrew Bible
Genre: Challenge: In The Beginning, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-04
Updated: 2010-03-04
Packaged: 2017-10-07 17:33:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/67497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekingferret/pseuds/seekingferret
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the <a href="http://in-the-beginning.dreamwidth.org/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://in-the-beginning.dreamwidth.org/"><b>in_the_beginning</b></a> fanwork festival. Based on the story of Melchizedek in Genesis 14, with allusions to Genesis 22, 2 Samuel 6, Lamentations, and probably other things I've lost track of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Haunted City

I am the King of the Haunted City. It is my privilege. It is my curse. I am the servant of the God of the Mount. He calls. I answer.

My City is named Shalem, the complete city. In the future, my God tells me, it will be named Yerushalayim, the city whose destiny is Peace. But my city is not yet complete. And I can see plainly that it is not destined for peace.

I see things no King should see, ghosts in the hills. Sacrifices my predecessors have made to the God of the Mount, and sacrifices my successors may make. But it is not my own descendants I am seeing. Another dynasty is in ascendance, and I think they will inherit my city.

I see a man, bearded and robed in worn-out linen. A leader of flocks but not yet flocks of men. He will come to my city with two sons, and will leave with only one. Or he will come to my city with one son, and my God will save him from his devotion. Or he will come to my city a father and depart the father of nations. I see these scenes, these contradictions, again and again and again. I do not know how it will turn out. The future is only for God.

I hear a song sometimes, echoing in the hills. It is a song of great contrast. "Avinu, malkenu," the voices cry out. Our father, our king. The singers have found the unity in contrast that is true completion. Melchizedek, the righteous King and Avraham, the Father of millions, joined in alliance. Someday, it may be more than a song. Someday, it may be history.

 

I see a man, bearded and robed in the finest of silk. He dances through the streets of my city, celebrating and offering thanks to my God. Except it is not my God, and it is not my City. History, I can see, will remember Shalem as the City of David.

I hear a song sometimes, echoing in the hills. It is a song of great jubilation. "David, Melech Yisrael, Chai Vekayam." It is David who will live forever, David whose Kingship is everlasting. I am just a servant in my time. This, I think, is my righteousness.

 

There are two kinds of immortality that God grants to man. There is the immortality of the father, whose children carry his legacy into the future. And there is the immortality of the king, who must rely on history to do the same. I have chosen to pursue the latter immortality. Perhaps, this was a mistake. Perhaps, immortality is the mistake.

 

War comes to the Land, with great groups of men waging fierce battle to prove the superiority of their Kings. I do not lead my people into the fight. We are secure in the hills of Shalem and secure in our faith in the God of the Mount.

But Avram, he is not as secure. He is a stranger in a strange land, a visitor surrounded by mighty Kings. They kidnap his nephew to drive him back to Ur of the Chasdim.

His faith in his God is strong. He takes up arms and rescues his nephew, winning despite their numbers. The tide is turning in the Land. A new King has appeared.

Shalem will not be my city much longer. Avraham is on the rise, and when new nations rise, others must fall. I can see the terrors that will haunt my city: the devastation and the fires and the famines. I can see the cycles of exile and return, exile and return. It is the will of the God of the Mount that I see all of this. Everything in the world is the will of the God of the Mount.

 

It is time for me to talk to Avram. I have seen the genesis of this meeting many times, my retinue joining me as we leave the Haunted City. We are laden down with gifts. Wine and bread and specialties for the feast. Lambs and calves to offer to the God of the Mount. Many times, I have watched this caravan depart the Haunted City and vanish into the mists of time.

It is time. It is time for the ghosts to briefly intersect with our world, as all ghosts do once. It is time for me to relinquish temporal sovereignty, time for me to set aside my claim over the Complete City, time for me to become no more than a malach tzedek- a righteous messenger of God's will.

So I call my people together and order them to assemble the caravan. Wine and bread and specialties for the feast. Lambs and calves to offer to the God of the Mount. Warriors dressed in finery. A party fit to accompany a King, and a party fit to greet a Father of nations.

And then we journey. It is not a long journey, but it feels long. It feels like all of eternity is passing before me.

 

I see a man. No, it is many men. They climb the hills of Shalem with a singleminded focus on their destination. They ascend to the Mount, and find in that ascent the spirit of revolution. It is not one time, but many times, many echoes, which in the streams of time blur together. The Mount is the place of transformation. It doesn't just change the men. It changes the world.

(Jesus Christ. Mohammed. Saladin. T.E. Lawrence. Moshe Dayan...) It doesn't matter what their names are. It doesn't matter who they are. The God of the Mount calls them, and they track him down. It doesn't even matter if they believe. My God is a God of change and eternity.

 

My meeting with Avram is contentious. I speak of the God of the Mount and he curses me for a heathen. His zealot's tongue chides my insistence on place. Elohim, he tells me, calls him wherever he stands. Elyon, he suggests angrily, does not mean 'mountain' but rather 'heaven'.

I don't tell him the truth I know. I am the King of Shalem, the priest of the God of the Mount, and when I leave my city, I am not the same man I am there.

But Avram did not come to me. I came to him, and here in Emek Shaveh, I can only be an emissary of the God of the Mount. I bring good tidings, bread and wine, and blessings to the man whose God rules over Heaven and Earth. The man who will someday stand over my city as the father of two great nations.

Together, we bring sacrifices, lambs and calves on the altar, to the God who rules over all Mankind.

 

And then we journey. It is not a long journey, but it feels long. It is my journey out of history, as I rejoin the ghosts in the Haunted City.


End file.
